General-screenwriting | Tag

Tales from the Digital Frontier: Breakthroughs in Storytelling

Posted on September 15, 2008 in General Screenwriting | No Comments

by Carolyn Handler Miller
As writers, we are practitioners of an ancient art: the art of storytelling. Storytelling is a continually evolving form of expression. The first storytellers had only one simple tool at their disposal – the spoken word. Later storytellers had more sophisticated methods of spinning tales, using staged dramas, printed texts, and ultimately, [...]

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Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

Posted on September 13, 2008 in General Screenwriting | 1 Comment

by George Orwell
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the [...]

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Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses by Mark Twain

Posted on September 13, 2008 in General Screenwriting | No Comments

by Mark Twain
“The Pathfinder” and “The Deerslayer” stand at the head of Cooper’s novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as [...]

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Breaking the Screenwriting Rules

Posted on September 9, 2008 in Story | 1 Comment

by Howard Suber
Everybody in Hollywood knows the top three rules of screenwriting:
1. Write what you know.
2. Films must have a happy ending.
3. Films must have three acts.
But few people know what these rules all have in common:
They are all wrong.
Rule #1: Write What You Know
There is no writer alive who has not been advised, “Write [...]

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How Little Red Riding Hood Made Me a Writer

Posted on September 8, 2008 in General Screenwriting | No Comments

by Christopher Keane
A story that made a big impression on me was “Little Red Riding Hood.” I was ten and my mother said to me, “Who’s the main character in the story?”
I thought for a moment, and said, “Red Riding Hood.”
“How so?”
“The story is called that,” I said. “Little Red Riding Hood.”
“You think [...]

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How Old is Too Old to Be a Screenwriter?

Posted on September 5, 2008 in General Screenwriting | No Comments

by D.B. Gilles
Raymond Chandler wrote his first screenplay at 56. He didn’t even publish his first novel until he was 51. For the record, he wrote the original screenplays for ‘Double Indemnity’ and ‘Strangers On A Train.’
In 1939, after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s career as a novelist had faltered, he needed money fast. He went to [...]

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The Real Key to a Writer’s Success

Posted on August 20, 2008 in General Screenwriting | 1 Comment

by James Bonnet
We all know how incredibly hard it is to get a screenplay produced. We have all heard talk about all the great scripts out there that never got made. And that might be true. But why is it true? If you have a professionally crafted screenplay, one with obvious commercial potential, which has [...]

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50 Articles to Improve your Writing

Posted on August 7, 2008 in General Screenwriting | 2 Comments

The Poynter Institute is a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists, but even if you are not a journalist all writers/filmmakers can learn for their site. Here is a list of a 50 articles by Roy Peter Clark from the Poynter site that all writers should all read.
Writing Tool #1: Branch to [...]

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What’s Wrong With The Three Act Structure

Posted on August 5, 2008 in Story | 10 Comments

by James Bonnet
The three act structure is not a story structure. You can’t find it in myths and legends or other great stories of the past and you can’t find it in nature. So why is it being applied to the screenplay or the story of a film? It’s a good question because it makes [...]

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The Lure of the Dark Side

Posted on August 4, 2008 in General Screenwriting | No Comments

by Pamela Jaye Smith
What is it that lures people over to the Dark Side?
Your audience wants to find out how people and things go bad, so in your story, be sure to reveal some of how the characters become the way they are — not to excuse their behavior but to get us engaged with [...]

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How NOT to Enter a Screenwriting Contest

Posted on August 4, 2008 in General Screenwriting | No Comments

by Brad Schreiber
When I founded the Mona Schreiber Prize for Humorous Fiction and Nonfiction in 2000, I did it to honor my mother, who wrote articles for magazines and newspapers, and taught writing in San Mateo County in Northern California.
When I formulated the rules for entering the contest, I thought I would never have a [...]

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Kevin Smith: on “Writers Block”

Posted on August 1, 2008 in General Screenwriting | 1 Comment

Kevin Smith in “Evening Harder” (Toronto, Canada) about writing movies and his daughter’s favorite tv show “Dora the Explorer”
Part 1

Part 2

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Turn Anything Into a Screenplay

Posted on August 1, 2008 in General Screenwriting | 1 Comment

If you follow the advice of screenwriting guru Robert McKee, almost anything can be made into a great story — even, say, Slashdot, the site run by Rob Malda (aka CmdrTaco).
1. Create a protagonist. CmdrTaco lives on Netopia, where his people, an enslaved race called the Bots, are forced to feed information into the Great [...]

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Cinematic Storytelling: Writing for the Unconscious

Posted on July 30, 2008 in Story | No Comments

by Jennifer van Sijll
The Case of The Sixth Sense
One has to wonder what Freud would have said, seated in a modern day Cineplex while watching the final credits of M. Night Shyamalan’s extraordinary film, The Sixth Sense. It’s hard to imagine a greater homage to Freud’s concept of the unconscious than its deft exploitation in [...]

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The Off-Screen Movie

Posted on July 29, 2008 in Story | 1 Comment

Of all the great articles on the Wordplay site this one by Terry Rossio & Ted Elliott is my favorite. It gives great insight into building momentum into your story. Reversals, exposition, and creating a compelling world.
…It hit me in the middle of watching the network premier of SCHINDLER’S LIST on NBC… when I [...]

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